Dynamic columns based on rows

Question

What I am doing might be really stupid, if so, please correct me, but I am trying to do the following thing:

I want to have a list with (for example) the following items:

List Addresses

-Name
-Address
-City
-Country

But, based on their Country, I want to display different columns that I want to record in a List. For instance:

CountryColumns

(United States - SSN - Yes)
(United States - State - Yes)
(United States - Province - No)
(United Kingdom - SSN - No)
(United Kingdom - State - No)
(United Kingdom - Province - Yes)

And then when the user picks United States in the country list, the next time the user edits his information, certain columns will be shown. (It's also possible that all will be shown, and that the next time the columns with No will be hidden).

I've looked at ways to do this, and I only found out that Infopath is able to do this. But, that'd mean I would have to create a different view for every country, and show / hide certain columns. It seems like that is a bit of overkill.

Anyone knows a way how to do this?

Greetings,

Mats

Answer 1

You cannot do this out of the box.

Answer 2

There are four ways you could modify SharePoint to do this that come to mind.

1. Have a list address content type and then a separate content type for each country that requires extra fields. Use a webpart to enter data to the list using the correct country's content type.

2. Same as above but instead of entering data through a web part, you can add the data into the list using the base address content type. Use an item adding event receiver to decide which content type to add the data to.

3. Use one super content type that includes all fields but with custom list view pages to filter the fields based on the county value.

4. Use infopath with either separate views for each country or a section for each special field with a condition to hide it if the required country isn't selected.

Personally I would recommend 4. It's the simplest and quickest to implement.

Answer 3

Here are three options:

1. Custom content types. This is probably the most SharePoint-y way to do it. You can create a content type for each Country and then control which fields are included in that content type. The obvious downsides to this are that you could end up creating a lot of content types and also that selecting a content type (especially when creating a new item) is not the same as selecting a choice from a dropdown list.
2. Javascript/jQuery. Either by changing your master page or by adding a Content Editor Web Part to your Edit Form, you could use javascript to hide certain fields based on the selected value of Country.
3. Custom fields. This is the most involved, but instead of having the SSN field be a regular Single Line of Text field, you could create a custom field that inherits from SPFieldText and then manages its render visibility based on the selected value of Country.